More Manufactured Outrage from the Left #8

To spit or not to spit version. Let’s add it up. So far we have 3 claims made by Dems during the recent HCR vote that righties wanted validated with video evidence before they’d believe they could have possibly happened. They are:

1. That Barney Frank was called a gay slur by a teabagger [Check]
2. That John Lewis was called a racial slur by a teabagger
3. That Emanuel Cleaver was spit upon [Check]

The following video is much better than the :23 and :48 first purported to show that none of the above happened. At 1:20 it’s pretty clear that Cleaver was spat upon. Now, even given this footage (liable to be the best we’ll ever get), you could argue that it was on purpose or you could argue that it was merely a wet shout. It will remain unclear because the guy has his hands covering his mouth. No way to tell.

What you CAN’T argue – and this was the crux of the wingnut argument up to now – is that those who were making these claims were doing so in a planned attempt to race bait. Given we now have corroboration of 2 out of the 3 above, I think it’s pretty clear this is not the case.